Apply HN: OrderTrip – Crowdsourcing local people as private tour guide | Hacker News Reader

Apply HN: OrderTrip – Crowdsourcing local people as private tour guide

14 pointskeioka12 comments

https://www.ordertrip.com/

Lets travelers crowdsource locals as tour guides. Travelers can post their itineraries and budgets on OrderTrip and a list of locals willing to help them are provided. Travelers then choose their guides and they pay for the guide after their tour is completed.

Instead of travelers choosing from a prescribed list of guides, the guides choose them. This helps ensure the person leading them around is familiar with what travelers want to see and do versus a tour guide who must show several spots along an itinerary but doesn’t have deep knowledge of that one spot a traveler really wants to know more about. Paying after the tour is over always offers an extra level of comfort too.

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I like the idea of "anyone can be a tour guide" as a gig economy company. But my experience is that professional, fulltime guides are much better guides within the arguments you made. Specially about deep knowledge about specific spots. What made you think otherwise?

Your benefits look much more like group tour vs personal tour (not pro guide vs local guide). Wouldnt this be your value proposition?

And assuming you have a local, personal guide and people want it. How do you train these guides? How do ensure their quality?

First of all, thank you for your comment and feedback. I appreciate it.

> But my experience is that professional, fulltime guides are much better guides within the arguments you made. Especially about deep knowledge about specific spots. What made you think otherwise?

Giving just the general knowledge of placs is less value because travelers can get information through google or Wikipedia.

What if a professor of History can be a guide, what if food blogger became a guide. These "nerd" people (positive meaning) can be a really good guide for some travelers.

I am sure they can have deeper knowledge. Moreover, you will get as many offers as possible from locals so that you can pick up the best guide.

Moreover, we are considering that the value of guide is not only deep knowledge. The guide's profile such as personality, job background, and interests are also important.

I don't remember "Guide" but people who I met and have great conversations. We believe that it is the main value.

In terms of value proposition, generally group tour vs personal tour but narrower value proposition is pro guide vs local guide. Moreover reservation vs crowdsourcing. Nobody does crowdsourcing personal local tour guide.

> How do you train these guides? How do ensure their quality?

At the beginning, we have to define what is the quality of guides for travelers.

I don't think giving knowledge is not main quality (or value) on our website. As I said, I believe that type of guide is less value these day. We will not train guides but advise them just to be polite and on time. I would like guide to show their own knowledge and perspective and traveler will review it.

Sorry for bad writing. I have to code Thank you again for your comment.

As a local, I often feel I would like to know more about the place where I live, read and ask historian friends to tell me stuff.

But, whenever I would go abroad with some programme where there was a "protocol" guide provided... it was pretty boring. Because he/she would go into so many details I had no connection to. I don't think I would actually pay for a "professional" guide.

... it's just my experience on the subject.

You most probably have decent chance with just being "AirBnB of tour guides" where Tour Guides are hosts and travelers visiting the town are guests. Like AirBnB, host guide showcases his preferred tourist spots in listing and traveler decide whether to book them. The quality is maintained through mutual reviews. You take a cut from traveler's payment and transfer rest to guide. The travelers pays in advance to you, a comfort to guide about no-shows and need to overbook.

Keep it a simple straightforward, easy to understand system. A decent extension to AirBnB lodging business and most probably your exit strategy.

Some cities (Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, etc) have licensing and testing requirements for tour guides. Will you verify tour guides are licensed, if required? Exclude those cities? Disrupt?

I have a friend that have an app that does something similar, the name is PartyWith a local

So I have help him research for similars and found this.

couch surfing, TravelMate, tournative.com, toursbylocals.com, moneysense, toursbylocals.com.

What I found is that families seem more willing to pay for a service like this, than young.

I think something like this is needed, but I question the need for an actual tour guide.

What if I wanted to go to Vancouver and I wanted a walking tour with some great food and drinks, with some idle time spent at a couple parks or walking around a museum? That's a pretty typical ask and something I'd gladly pay $10 for in order to just get a list of things to visit in a sensible order (so I can just walk along a set path from place to place). As a local of Vancouver I could create my own "poutine, cocktails, and parks" guide, post it, and get some commission every time its sold.

How will you recruit guides?

This is a good idea, however you will have crazy safety problems here. What would prevent your "guide" to fake stumbling upon pickpockets or worse. I surely wouldn't hire anyone who is not certified one way or another.

How do you make money? What prevents the local contact travelers privately, bypassing your platform?

> How do you make money? We will take a commission model like Airbnb.

> What prevents the local contact travelers privately, bypassing your platform?

We will scan the part of messages such as URL and Email not to navigate the other URL. However, reviews and tour guide records are more important to get reliability and customers for them. If they navigate to their own website or contact privately, they can not use review system which means they have not done any tour guide previously. Obviously, we need to consider more the way to prevent the situation like this.

Thank you for your comment, yanglang.

Hey! I'd love to sign up as a tour guide. Can I?

Have you looked at vayable.com?

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